Fan replacement for a Mac SE/30

[CC_333]

Well, someone, somewhere must've thought of this problem of CRTs facing extinction.

That being said, I'm sure that someday, some enterprising person will build a few....

c

 

[Johnnya101]

Ok gonna get a new fan for me SE:/30 this week. Are there any more fans out there? The delta seems good but it looks kind of loud. I don't want any less airflow than that though.

 

[Scott Squires]

The Delta is very loud. But you won't find one that is much quieter with the same airflow. I will probably get a Delta myself at some point just to see how it sounds.

If you get the Delta instead of the Noctua, you'll also have to figure out how to get it connected to power. The Noctua comes with adapters for that.

 

[Johnnya101]

Yeah I'll just get the noctua. It still is almost double the cfm as the stock too I think. Too bad it's brown.

 

[Johnnya101]

Went with the brown Noctua. Awesome! Computer back case used to get warm, it now stays cool!

 

[just.in.time]

Johnnya, can you actually feel the airflow out of the computer? I installed a Noctua in my SE/30 while it keeps most of the case fairly cool to the touch, save for one spot that gets a little warm, I can only feel the slightest amount of airflow coming out the back. I'm wondering if the factory fan moved more air.

 

[just.in.time]

Actually, after 40 minutes of run time with an after dark screen saver going, the side with the analog board definitely is warm. Did you change the mounting setup or use the stock mount?

 

[Johnnya101]

I had 360Alaska install it when he was recapping mine. Looks like he just screwed it into the existing mount.

I feel LOTS of air coming out. Cool air. So mines working...

He DID solder it in place. Maybe that makes a difference? The wires I mean. Unless you did that too vs using the connector cables.

 

[just.in.time]

I used the 4pin to 3pin adapter to plug into the hard drive power connector on the analog board. It was empty as my SCSI2SD adapter is bus powered.

Would you be able to snap some photos of your fan installation?

 

[Johnnya101]

Well literally, imagine the fan mounted on the sliver mount with wires soldered where the old ones were... but give me till tonight to get photos.

 

[68krazy]

I did the same modification to my SE/30, with the same fan.  The fan shroud is mounted too far forward in this picture — I realized my error as I was putting the machine back together and fixed it later.



Fan moves some air, but not a huge amount.  Computer still gets warm after an hour or two of operation.  I'd say it probably moves more air than the original, but still not a huge amount.  It is a 60mm fan, after all.

 

[nickpunt]

Wondering if we can rig up some kind of temperature-controlled fan speed changer, so we can have our silent macs and have them protected as they heat up.

Edit: I think this 12v PWM Noctua (amazon) + this 12v thermostat might work (here's the manual). Seems the things to do are getting PWM-capable fan, and getting the right voltage (5v or 12v). Maybe with this thermostat you can go with a fan that can achieve higher CFM fan though, since it can throttle.

As far as thermostats, there's several ones on the market that may work (no idea if so, but here's one and another), and there's a bunch of DIY projects like this one and this one that do this, but DIY projects can be flawed based on reading the comments.

 

[just.in.time]

@68krazy mine is set up similarly then, aside from using the molex plug that the hard drive would normally use. I'm going to do a side by side comparison with my SE fdhd tomorrow. It still has the factory fan.

Honestly, I may just have my expectations too high. I figured these fans would really move some air and the computer would stay just a few degrees warmer than when powered off, even hours later.

 

[ants]

I installed the Noctua fan in my SE/30 today - boy was it a lot of work! The old fan wires were stuck in with hot glue - I removed them by melting the glue with an old soldering iron.

Now my Mac runs really quiet and I can feel good airflow coming out the back. Very happy with the result.

 

[mpe]

I replaced the fan with Noctua NF-A6x25 as suggested above. Slightly more silent, but still quite audible.

Do you guys recommend to use any ultra or low-noise adaptor (13.38 CFM) or would you run it at full speed (17.2 CFM)? I am using sd2scsi so no internal hard drive inside my SE/30 if that makes any difference.

I can't find the datasheet of the old PanaFlo fan, but in an old Macworld magazine, they reported SE/30's fan to have 10 CFM. So the Noctua should be comfortably above that even with the slowing resistor in place if I can trust these numbers.

 

[Sunoo]

Interesting, because I'm using that same fan full-speed, and I can barely hear that it's running at all with the case all closed up.

 

[SE30_Neal]

I didn’t even realise the se/30 had a fan, I should check mine is working 

 

[superjer2000]

Johnnya, can you actually feel the airflow out of the computer? I installed a Noctua in my SE/30 while it keeps most of the case fairly cool to the touch, save for one spot that gets a little warm, I can only feel the slightest amount of airflow coming out the back. I'm wondering if the factory fan moved more air.

Resurrecting an old thread - @just.in.time did you ever get this resolved?  I just finished recapping one of SE/30's analog boards and installed the Noctua fan at the same time.  I just cut the wires from the Elina fan and soldered the Noctua fan's wires in place.  I have another SE/30 with the Elina fan and side-by-side the Elina puts out way more air as felt by my hand at the back vent.  The Noctua is allowing the top part of the case by the flyback to get a lot warmer than my Elina cooled SE/30.  I bought the Delta fan and may give that a try as well, although soldering it in and then replacing it if it is too loud is a bit of a pain.  Ultimately, I bought two of these Noctua fans and am really disappointed as the CFM per the fan specs is clearly overstated in my case...

 

[just.in.time]

@superjer2000 Nope, the Noctua is awful for actual cooling purposes.  My SE/30 gets warm in the same exact spot as you described.  It's incredibly overrated at best, and downright lies at worst in regards to it's airflow.  The 25 year old fan I pulled out had way better airflow.  At some point I will get around to reinstalling the factory fan and tossing that joke of a Noctua.  Let me know how the Delta fan works.

 

[superjer2000]

oThanks @just.in.time.  I pulled the Noctua and settled on the Delta connected to the Low Noise adapter that came with the Noctua fan.  The Delta at full speed was way too loud although the amount of air coming out of the back of the unit was incredible - You could literally feel the air coming out of the SE/30 back vent half way across the room.  The Delta with the Low Noise Adapter is very quiet and seems to put out around the same airflow as the Elina (but quieter).

As a side point, I timed how long the Noctua, Elina and Delta fans took to inflate a kitchen garbage bag to actually test the relative CFMs.  The Noctua took almost twice as long as the Elina and the Delta was about 1/4 as long as the Elina.  That tells me that Noctua's CFM ratings are definitely suspect - I wonder if their fan design has issues dealing with any type of air flow restriction.  This is actually the second Noctua fan I've been disappointed in - I had 3d printed a fan adapter for my fanless compact Macs and tried the Noctua NF-A8 80mm fan as it was rated as having close to the same CFM as my cheap ($5.00) Arctic F8 80mm fan.  Again, the Noctua's cooling capability was dismal and I went back to the slightly louder, but much more capable Arctic.  That's $60 in Noctua fans I've wasted.